On the circuit

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Federal Sources founder Tom Hewitt sponsors an annual event he calls the Federal Information Technology Summit, and he says it features some of the top executives in the field. He's not talking about a bustling hotel ballroom filled with people in suits. The talking takes place in chairlifts, and "summit" refers to the snowy top of a mountain.

The summit is about 15 buddies who head west for three days every winter to ski. This year it was Park City, Utah, in mid-March, and attendees included GTSI's chairman and chief executive officer, Dendy Young; Input's chairman, CEO and president, Peter Cunningham; Robbins-Gioia's CEO, Jim Leto; and Systems and Software Consortium's president and CEO, Jim Kane.

One topic of discussion: GTSI's becoming one of the first product distribution companies to comply with the Defense Department's radio frequency identification technology standards. You know, if you guys are going to discuss real stuff like that, do it in Florida next time.

When Apogen Technologies CEO Todd Stottlemyer looks out the window of his office near the McLean, Va., Hilton, he sees the building where he worked 20 years ago as a vice president of BDM International, which has long since been sold to the Carlyle Group and then Northrop Grumman. Stottlemyer, who was also chief financial officer at BTG, now runs a 900-employee firm that specializes in homeland security and defense, and earned $205 million in revenue last year.

For DOD, Apogen does multispectral imaging that can detect submerged landmines from unmanned aerial vehicles. Company officials have engineered a spin-off application that can detect cervical and oral cancers. Stottlemyer said that's a perfect illustration of Apogen's name, a cross between "apogee" and "genesis."

The company adopted the name after a merger in June 2004; its motto is "The height of innovation." Stottlemyer, who played baseball in high school, relives his past by coaching Chantilly, Va., youth football in the fall and Little League in the spring for his four kids.

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